Free Peril by Thomas H. Cook

He’d seen her body hauled away and yet he expected her to walk through the door at the usual hour, a cigarette dangling from the corner of her mouth.
    â€œ ‘Blame It on My Youth,’ ” he said. “Lucille didn’t sing that until she was forty-six, remember?”
    Jake swiped the counter with a white cloth. “Made it seem like only old broads could sing that song.”
    â€œYeah,” Abe said. Then, because he could find nothing else to do, he walked to the piano, placed his fingers on the old familiar keys. “What do you want to hear?” he called.
    â€œThat peppy one she liked. I mean, when she wasn’t in a mood.”
    Abe knew the one Jake meant, and so began a bright, up-tempo version of “Your Feet’s Too Big.”
    When he finished, he returned to the bar. Susanne had come in by then, another book by one of what she called “the great minds” under her arm. She was a philosophy major at NYU and peppered her drink deliveries with pithy little aphorisms from her latest readings. Abe had heard scores of them during the few months Susanne had worked for him, but the only one that had stuck came from some Greek whose name he couldn’t remember. Courage in a man, this Greek had said, was simply this, to endure silently whatever heaven sends.
    He thought of Mavis, then of Lucille, and finally of that fucking cat, Pookie, the one he’d found dead on the kitchen floor three weeks after Mavis’ abrupt departure. No, he thought, that Greek got it wrong. Courage was to endure silently whatever heaven takes away.
    â€œSo, what about Lucille?” Jake asked. “You gonna put an ad in
Variety,
something like that?”
    Abe shook his head. “Nah,” he said.
    If he put an ad in
Variety
, he knew a thousand kids would show up, all of them scooping the notes or singing through their noses, girls with tattoos and neon hair, with pierced tongues and ears and God knows what else under their blouses or below their belts.
    â€œHow about an open mike?” he said. “We did that when Lucille left for a year. Just put a sign in the window that says Open Mike and see who drops in.”
    Jake shrugged. “You’ll get that woman who makes all her clothes out of carpet remnants, remember her?”
    Abe laughed. “Or the one who only sang songs with animals in the titles.”
    â€œBut changed the titles. ‘Sweet Doggie Brown,’ for Christ’s sake.”
    â€œ ‘My Funny Butterfly.’ ”
    â€œJesus, what a nutbag.”
    â€œBut not as bad as the one dressed in red rubber,” Abe said. “Changed the titles too, remember. ‘I’ll Be Peeing You.’ ”
    They were both laughing now, and in their laughter Abe caught a glimpse of what life had been before Mavis fled. “Yeah,” he said, the laughter trailing off now. “Open mike is the way to go.”
    MORTIMER
    Mortimer rolled the coffee cup in his hand and tried to keep the pain in his belly from showing in his eyes. Only three days had passed since he’d taken the deal, and here Caruso was making changes.
    â€œThis is how Mr. Labriola sees it,” Caruso said. “Since he’s paying the bill, he’s got a right to check out the guy who’s doing the job. The guy himself, I mean. Directly.”
    â€œNo way,” Mortimer told him.
    They were sitting in a coffee shop at Port Authority, the morning commuters rushing by in noisy waves, the city in full morning frenzy. Nobody smelling the roses, Mortimer thought, though he’d never stopped to smell them either. Did anyone?
    Caruso sipped a hazelnut blend from a paper cup. “That could be a deal breaker, you know, if the guy won’t show.”
    â€œHe won’t show,” Mortimer said flatly. “There ain’t no give in this. He won’t show . . . period.”
    Caruso looked offended. “So who does he think he is, fucking